Earlier this month I posted a three-part series demonstrating how to develop a plan that gets the PR electricity streaming through your press and customers. The more carefully you plan, the less likely a misstep or surprise that could damage or even destroy your efforts.
To help you spot Murphy when he steps through the door, here are the five most common mistakes I see.
1. Send your invitation to the press and assume they will attend. Once is never enough. Begin three weeks ahead with emails every 2-3 days. After the third email, begin calling recalcitrant invitees. Follow up with email reminders four days in advance. Two days before the event, call those who didn’t respond to the reminder. The night before, email everyone, the details and directions “so it’s handy.”
Or, be more creative to capture their attention. Send the initial invitation by U.S. mail (yep, where you use a stamp) printed on a sample of your new product or on some handy gadget for their desks. Imagine their surprise, when they get something from a mail carrier.
2. Entrust speakers with developing their own presentations. Most will come with 50 disjointed slides and promise that they’ll “go quick.” None will be past slide 5 when their time expires. It will go unnoticed, however, because the audience fell asleep on slide 2. Instigate a mandatory presentation review process going from outline through the final. Conduct a minimum of one live practice session. 3. Schedule weekly press releases; subject TBD. New hires and promotions are news, right? No, but that’s generally where these projects end up going for grist. While I see this resolve to “get our name out there” frequently, press releases are always a waste. Thousands of press releases are issued each day. Even industry publications only cover the top few. Be creative, there are better ways to get your company’s name in the spotlight.
Tomorrow, in part 2 I’ll tell you how to handle the two biggest perceived demons in promotional marketing – villainous self-ware demos and those reporters who are out to get you.
What other problems are you facing? Want to guest blog? Let us know.
AirSprint Private Aviation increases business people’s face-to-face time with clients, colleagues and family members through fractional ownership of the firm’s fleet of Pilatus PC-12 luxury aircraft.
The promise of the 12-year-old Canadian firm is that business moves incredibly faster if you aren’t shackled to commercial airline schedules, long lines and plastic chairs as your workspace. Having made its success in Canada, two years ago AirSprint set up a U.S. head office in Scottsdale, Arizona, and expanded its operations into the American Southwest.
The problem they faced was how to appropriately deliver its key message that positioned AirSprint as the premier provider of business and personal luxury private aviation services that are exceptionally safe, secure, and convenient. This isn’t a market to be addressed with cold calls and coupons. Nor, would passive mass-market advertising programs catch the attention of busy C-suitors.
Direct mail might seem a surprising tactic. After all, AirSprint is selling a luxury aircraft experience, not supermarket bargains. However, using new computerized printing methods in conjunction with a database refined by the company’s sales staff, AirSprint could individually personalize letters, brochures and other collateral to achieve the right upscale look and feel.
To connect directly with decision makers, AirSprint needed to dodge the inevitable gatekeepers who might trash or redirect even the most personalized letter.
That trick was accomplished by sending a handsome personalized hourglass, alluding to the value of time saved with AirSprint’s solution, via a delivery service. While the hourglass and delivery charges cost considerably more than a letter-and-stamp approach, they won passage of AirSprint’s message directly to the decision makers’ desks.
The delivery service confirmed arrival of each package, setting the stage for salespeople to call the prospective execs the next day.
During follow-up calls, the AirSprint’s hourglass promotion earned “rave reviews.” Though still early, the program has netted 12 interested parties and six proposals are already on the table. That’s a pretty quick conversion rate when the initial cost for your share of efficient luxury business travel is $614,000.
How often do you get to shake hands with the decision makers the day after your first pitch? AirSprint demonstrates how focusing first on what success looks like, rather than the delivery vehicle, and then planning backwards gets incredible results.
The hourglass and delivery service worked well for AirSprint. What is your craftiest caper for getting past the gatekeepers directly to the person who writes the checks?
What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
In Part 1 of this how-to on the basic steps of marketing, I discussed gathering essential intelligence on your customers and personalizing your direct mail. Today, we’ll cover the final two steps.
4. Take advantage of direct email’s special benefits. You can, for example, divvy up recipients based on subject matter; test response to different subject lines; automatically capture email addresses; track responses to email and e-newsletter offerings; and compile data on what visitors do on your site. Check out email marketing services that can help push the envelope on your direct-email programs, including Constant Contact, iContact and Vertical Response.
5. Marketing increasingly involves social media. The basics are simple: a website and blog, and, depending on your audience, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter accounts. Its capabilities go much further. Social media analysis, for example, does for Internet direct marketing what Billy Beane did for baseball strategy – made it a numbers game.
I’ve also created a companion checklist for this blog that works. If you’d like a copy, let me know. What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
Marketing your business is essential to attracting new customers and retaining existing ones. Not a marketer? You sell coffee, produce ballets or provide financial services? Time to run your business is also somewhat essential?
Agreed. So, I’ve boiled it down to five straightforward steps that will work for almost any business. I’ll cover the first three steps today and the final two – direct email and social media on Thursday. One caution, from hard learned experience, don’t try to do everything at once. Start with one step and build.
Understand your target market. If you can’t describe your ideal customer, you’ll inevitably waste time and money coaxing prospects of little or no value. Start by listing common characteristics of your existing best and worst customers. Subscribe to industry and marketing e-newsletters. Use a Really Simple Syndication or RSS reader to aggregate industry news and other information.
Know your competitors like James Bond knows Ernst Blofeld. For starts, who have you lost sales to or frequently bids against you? Ask your browser for the top 10 firms in your business. Peruse their websites and subscribe to their e-newsletters and blogs. Recruit your favorite search engine to alert when competitors appear in the news. Pricing can be particularly difficult to ferret out. Try networking, reading and talking to customers.
Handle your direct mail like your daughter’s wedding invitations.Personalize them. Highlight the date, location, where the couple’s registered. Emphasize the seafood buffet. Make clear the fresh fish precedes unwrapping gifts. Respond quickly to those who lost invitations. Track Uncle Harry’s behavior.
Individually personalize your direct mail piece. Highlight key info in bold headlines, graphics, colors that pop and subheads – MOST IMPORTANT emphasize benefits, not features. Don’t send the menu, just tell guests they’ll leave full. Make a clear compelling offer to encourage interest and immediately respond. Track everything to improve future campaigns.
As I said, competitive intelligence is critical, but difficult to accomplish. How do you keep tabs on your competitors? What couldn’t you figure out? Maybe some of you 007s can tell us how you’ve uncovered information on your Blofeld.
What other problems are you facing? Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re always looking for what interests you and for expert guest bloggers.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of our series on PR planning to support your direct marketing and other promotional efforts, I discussed setting goals, analyzing your customers and competitors, and developing your killer Key Message. This final segment is where you take it all, and stir it up with whole bunch of imagination into PR activities that fix your messages in your stakeholders’ minds and have them nodding yes.
4. Create promotional activities that amplify your message. This is the fun part. Rules have no place. Be creative. Have fun. Go nuts.
When most people, even many public relations professionals, think of PR, press releases are the first thing that comes to mind. They still play a role. Briefing reporters face to face or over the phone also works. Social media has added a bunch of new ways to communicate.
However, 99 percent of the time, there are more effective – and more exciting – means to tell your story. My tip is to simply look around to see what you have to work with. You’ll be surprised. Ideas will jump out at you. This is also the best way to go if you don’t have “hard news,” the staple for press releases and briefings.
So, forget press releases. Better ideas are endless. Is there a customer who could tell your story? How about casting a talented engineer with a gift for theatrics (I call them “mad scientists”) to tell reporters his story? Is there a provocative angle to your story that you might exploit by conducting poll or study? (Reporters love them.)
Can you demonstrate your product in a real-life situation? How about inviting some industry experts to a freewheeling talk-show webinar with an exuberant employee filling in for Dave Letterman? Is there a side story you could stage humorously in a YouTube video?
The best way to come up with ideas is to hand pick a few individualistic colleagues for an hour of brainstorming. One idea will build on another. Hurdles will disappear as quickly as they appear. I guarantee that within 60 minutes you’ll have four or five amazing ideas.
And don’t let a tight budget get in your way, either. Brainstorm great ideas and then tailor them for the budget. It works.
5. Make a list of what works and what doesn’t. Finally, don’t forget how you constructed your PR blockbuster. Take time to write down what worked and what didn’t. Pull out the list when planning your next activity. While it might seem self-evident, put such lists where you can find them. I’m flabbergasted at how often they can’t be found when the next promotion rolls around.
I propose we have some fun and help a colleague at the same time by putting Step 4 to work. Would one of you want to rough out Steps 1-3 for a project you’re starting? Just provide enough background for this group to brainstorm some incredible PR activities for you. Any takers?
What other problems are you facing? Let us know. If it has broad interest, we’ll put the topic on our blog schedule. Are you expert on a topic that will interest this community? Contact us. We’re eager to share this space with guest bloggers.
In Part 1 of this series on PR planning I covered the first two steps in toward developing a successful plan — picturing success and conducting intelligence operations. Today, in step three of our five-step plan, I’ll show you how to create a “Key Message.”
Messaging is constantly discussed in direct marketing, but it’s seldom done effectively. That’s a major oversight because your Key Message is the most important element of your plan. The purpose for all of your PR and marketing activities is to instill that single message at the top of your customers’ and reporters’ minds and have them convinced that it’s true.
3. Develop a “key” message. A Key Message is the one thing (Yep, just one!) that customers, press and other stakeholders must remember about your product or service if they could remember nothing else. The purpose of a Key Message is to capture customers’ attention by portraying their world as it would look after your product or service has solved their single biggest problem.
By concentrating on the customers’ single, most longed-for desire, a Key Message is extraordinarily more powerful than the customary practice of flinging every benefit and company brag at customers and press the instant they step within range. That information isn’t forgotten, just subordinated until the targets catch their breath and are ready to hear more.
If it sounds tricky, it’s not. You just approach a Key Message as if you’re the customer. Describe the change in the customers’ world the product or service would make. To make cooking up a killer Key Message easy, I developed this recipe. Bon appétit!
Killer Message Extraordinaire
Ingredients (do not exceed 1 of each):
1 ea. Product or service name
1 ea. Most important desire in customers’ lives, described
1 ea. Difference in your offering from your competitors’
Blend ingredients in a single sentence until the essence of the message is persuasive and believable. Serve in a novel and memorable way that enhances the dish.
The balance of one of each ingredient is important. The objective is for everyone to have the same message top of mind. Too much of any ingredient, and reporters, for example, might write stories about the wrong message.
The Key Message’s presentation may differ depending on the audience, but it’s still the same message. For example, customers want to see how wonderful their world will be after your product has solved their problem. Reporters, on the other hand, are interested in “news.” For them, the message should be framed to emphasize what’s new.
Before concluding, let me tip you off to the two most common stumbling blocks in the Key Message process – democracy and sales leaders. Both tend to cause mass message proliferation.
In a democratic messaging environment, everyone gets to contribute messages, and you end up with a long string of messages packed onto a product brochure.
Sales heads have a solution to customers’ every “pain point,” and irrefutable responses to every objection. If they work on customers, they’re perfect as messages, right? Until you seize your audience with a compelling Key Message, you won’t be able to whet their appetites for this detail.
Here’s how usually work it out. Recruit a few colleagues with the right stuff for Key Message development. As Key Message creation begins, start educating those stakeholders on the pluses of the approach. The team creates the Key Message and shares the finished version with the now educated stakeholders.
What problems are you facing or subjects you’d like to know more about? Let us know. If it has broad interest, we’ll put the topic on our blog schedule. Also, contact us if you have expertise that you feel would interest this community. We’re eager to share this space with guest bloggers.
I talk to heads of many large and small business who for one reason or another don’t think PR activities are appropriate for them. We reach our entire market with direct mail. Word of mouth produces customers in this business. We know every customer personally.
In its basic form, PR (short for public relations or press relations) is the business of generating positive publicity about a company or its products – for free. Most consider it a discipline for large businesses. However, new tools and techniques, and particularly the Internet, have changed that.
Today, businesses of all sizes, even one-man shops, are turning to the myriad of different options PR offers to become more competitive. You can use PR to spread the word about your products into new channels, build a reputation for your company that commands premium prices or become a “luminary,” an expert in your field, who’s called upon by press, industry groups and prospects looking for the best person to help them.
The first thing you need is a plan. PR offers so many options that before you select specific PR activities, you need to do some detective work about your customers and competitors to craft the pitch your prospects will find most compelling. That information will guide you in custom tailoring imaginative PR activities that will capture reporters’ and customers’ attention and have them nodding yes.
In this three-part series, I share the five simple, easy steps that I use on every project. They form the basic plan that guides me in creating the most efficient, effective PR activities to achieve the results I’m after. Give them a try and I’ll bet you have the same success.
In this installment, I show how to set goals, and to learn what makes your customers and competitors tick.
On February 7, I’ll show you how to create killer messages – the most important aspect of any PR activity. On February 9, I’ll tell you the secrets to creating PR activities that consistently win over customers and press, and provide some tips on how to capitalize further on what you’ve learned.
Define what success looks like. This intelligence will guide your next steps. That’s your goal. What do you want to accomplish? Is it to make more people aware of your new product? Establish yourself in the community or industry as the expert in a specific area? Have the best-qualified candidates view your company as a great place to work? Gain a reputation for your legendary quality of service?
Know your customers and competitors. Combine the common characteristics of your hottest prospects into a “persona,” an imaginary ideal customer. Personas are gaining popularity because it’s easier to plan around “Joanna, vice president of procurement,” for example, than stacks of notes and data. To create personas, gather as much pertinent detail as you can. What are your customers’ two biggest problems? How much can they buy? Where do they get their information? Then incarnate that data into your ideal target customer.
Next, identify your major competitors. Snoop around their websites and use your browser to search for news and other information about them. Subscribe to their print communications, email newsletters and online magazines. Where do your products or services have an advantage? Where are theirs weak? What’s their biggest claim – lowest price, expert service, biggest selection?
This step is often overlooked because to many businesspeople “customers are customers” and “competitors do what we all do.” As Péllo is quick to point out, “You don’t sell to everyone. And your competitors are all different. That’s why customers pick one of you over the rest.” Do some browsing. I guarantee the new insight you gain will be astonishing.
What other problems are you facing? Let us know. If it has broad interest, we’ll put the topic on our blog schedule. Have a topic that will interest the community? Contact us. We’re eager to share this space with guest bloggers.
